Now, he arrives at the CPO just in time to help the orchestra — which he used to perform with in the 1980s and '90s — celebrate its 60th anniversary, in what also happens to be Music Director Roberto Minczuk's final season as its conductor.

"Over the years," says Honens Director of Career and Competiton Plannig Andrea Davison, "the classical music scene in Calgary has been growing and growing and growing along with the city, which is huge — because it shows the appetite and interest and also a great collaborative spirit between all the organizations to give each other a boost and help each other grow. "

"I came to town for their Wall of Sound show," Michael says, "and as soon as I saw the show, I said, I should be living here and being part of the choir — so I ended up moving, pretty much on a whim a month and a half later, at the end of March last year. "

"If you’re going to do really dark subject matter," he says, "you either have to be really beautiful or really funny.
"My work isn’t beautiful," he says. "I try to make it as beautiful as I can, but you know, I’m just not very good and so it has to be funny. "

It's simultaneously hilarious, dramatic, and satiric, and Demeanor delivers it with the cockeyed assurance a guy fuelled on a few mixed drinks at Cowboys might, producing an absolute instant Calgary classic.

That might sound all dance intellectual, but the truth is that Deep Aerobics is a form of performance where the demarcation line between performer and audience member starts out blurred, and ends up obliterated — at least it does if Gutierrez has his way.

"Dance can be really intimidating," she says, "Whereas I think my stuff, a character will go in and out of an experience, and the reason they go into dance, (is) because there’s no words to describe the experience anymore, so then they say it through dance.

That psychological split forms the arc of Paddle Song, as Johnson evolves from a Victorian frontier heroine of sorts into a First Nations activist, or whatever passed for one in the early days of the 20th century.